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The Problem With Email

The Problem With Email

A lot of times at work, I get emails like this:

Subject: Hey were is the draft you said you would send?Body: (Blank)

and this:

Subject: Can you forward me the thing again? I can’t find it from last time.Body: thansk.

and finally this:

Subject: Never mind.Body: (Blank)

All within an hour.

I have other clients that write ones like this:

Subject: UpdateBody: Hi, there! I’ve been traveling the last two months, sorry for the wait. Where we we? Can we pick up with…

Why does this happen?

E-mail began as a replacement for mail, which is largely a passive system for communication. Now, e-mail is considered instantaneous. Remember when our mail programs would check for new emails every hour? Now, they search a more like every second. So as more and more devices allow us to keep an eye on things, people have begun to think of mail as more of a tool of instant message than that of a thoughtful missive.

What can be done?

We enter into a paradox with mail. The longer the mail, the easier it may have been handled in a conversation. The more conversations, the more you wish it could’ve just been handled in e-mail. This is known as The Cycle of (Time) Suck.

There is definitely a balance to be had between the two. The problem these days lies in our ability to always be available. Maybe waiting a little bit longer wouldn’t be so bad, and we could stop using so many ways to communicate and instead think more about communicating.